From suburban mom to aspiring rock star

Like many empty nesters, Courtney Yasmineh is looking to downsize and do some traveling. In her case, however, she has no intention of slowing down.

To the contrary, Yasmineh is putting her Wayzata home on the market, moving into an apartment on New York's Upper West Side, and booking U.S. and European tour dates with her Twin Cities-based band.

The live dates are in support of Yasmineh's latest album, "Red Letter Day," the sassy, sexy yet reflective nine-song collection she released in November.

The record is the fifth the alt-rock/indie pop singer-songwriter has made in the last decade. But "Red Letter Day" is the first album that Yasmineh, a single parent after a divorce, has made since the youngest of her three children went to college.

They're proud, happy and relieved that their mother's music is gaining recognition, Yasmineh said. She's eager, meanwhile, to make a damn-the-torpedoes run at establishing a full-time musical career, albeit a couple of decades or so after she wanted to.

"This is my time, and I'm not going to waste it," Yasmineh said recently. "This is the year to go on tour. This is the year to put out the best record of my life because I can finally promote it. I'm trying to do it all as fast as possible."

As evidence of that, Yasmineh and her band made their South by Southwest debut last spring, recorded "Red Letter Day" during a nine-day summer marathon in a SoHo studio in New York and completed a 10-date European club tour in October.

"I made all those records but couldn't promote them because I couldn't go away," Yasmineh said of her earlier work. "Then we would do these tours and they would just be a week or two. But I was home constantly in between times and the recordings were made here in town. I could record while they were at school. And I was home making dinner every night."

She also was volunteering at school and appearing, briefly, as a guest designer on HGTV and has taught creative writing and songwriting and given guitar and vocal lessons.

A Chicago native, Yasmineh was in her teens when she ran away to escape family difficulties, taking refuge on the Iron Range in her grandfather's abandoned hunting cabin. She got a scholarship to Macalester College in St. Paul, got married and settled, more or less, into suburban life in Wayzata.

Yasmineh has high praise for her friends in Wayzata, and the community itself. "I think now they sort of love it that there's a rock star in the midst," Yasmineh said. "I have never seen a community of such high-functioning people. They take great care of their children, of their homes. They're super-responsible and they've never let me down, and I've been there for 20 years."

Yasmineh had written songs and performed, but had no idea how to pursue music professionally. The chance finally came when she got to record a song, inspired by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, that she had written for her community church.

That led to her first release, 2004's "Early Days," which includes the semi-autobiographical, fanciful "Married to Bob," as in Dylan, her musical hero. Yasmineh's songs have ranged from alternative rock to folk to the "fluorescent pop masterpiece" that one critic dubbed her 2009 record "Beautiful Lonely."

"Red Letter Day" is her "most rock album yet," Yasmineh said. Recording it in New York was a radical departure. So was the songwriting process, which took place largely in the studio, as band members and additional players responded to ideas she had recorded on her phone and Yasmineh composing lyrics on the fly.

The additional players included musician-producer Charley Drayton, whose credits as a producer and musician include work with Keith Richard, Paul Simon and Fiona Apple. Drayton brought an integrity that Yasmineh said "compelled everyone to work hard, fast and smart."

The process gives "Red Letter Day" a sense of immediacy that Yasmineh feels distinguishes the new record. "I like it so much better than anything I've done," she said. "This is the record where I feel like 'this is what I do.' "

Rob Genadek, who produced "Red Letter Day" and plays drums in Yasmineh's band, said the new album features some of her best songs. "A lot of it came from the heart instead of the brain. And the vibe is just so authentic and in-your-face. Courtney totally rose to the occasion," said Genadek, who also owns the Brewhouse Recording Studio in Minneapolis.

"Then you spend the rest of your life trying to live up to some previous success," Yasmineh said. "I'm glad I don't have that, some specter of when I was younger and prettier, when I was hot and popular. I'm not burdened by that, thank God. This is as cool and hot as I've ever been."

Yasmineh may not fit the industry mold, Genadek said, but she wins over those who give her a chance.

"No one would expect it from a woman who has had three kids, to be touring and doing this," Genadek said. "The whole scenario doesn't compute. That doesn't take away from it, that it's not as good as people perceive it to be or as I perceive it to be. Each record she's developed and gotten better. She's gotten better on stage. I don't see her slowing down."